Maternity allowances
The federal Labor government last week mooted a proposal to pay maternity allowances through the social security system to women workers employed in the private sector.
It has been described as a pro-women reform, enabling all women workers to receive paid maternity leave, regardless of where they are employed.
But in exchange for the federal government's mere "considering" of the proposal, the ACTU has agreed to reduce from $10 to $8 per week two wage rises to be paid to low income earners over the next two years.
That is, workers who have suffered declining real wages for years under the Accord and who have no hope of benefiting from enterprise bargaining agreements in a period of high unemployment and a weak independent workers movement, might get $8 this year and $8 next year, and women workers may get paid maternity leave for 12 weeks.
It's all part of the "social wage" that the Accord was meant to provide workers, and which has been very thin on the ground: even if you don't get wage rises in the form of cash in hand, other social benefits are supposed to accrue that will increase your standard of living.
So this maternity leave proposal is a double trade-off for wage rises: for the rises we didn't get through a decade of the accord, and for $4 a week that low income earners will lose in the next two years. That's a lot of trade-off to be carried by one rather minor reform.
At this stage, the maternity leave proposal has been debated in terms of whether it is to be means tested, how widely it may be applicable, the logistics of organising it through the Department of Social Security and how much it could cost the government.
But one of the most crucial issues in the discussion has yet to be raised. Private industry, which profits directly from the employment of its now more highly productive work force (thanks to restructuring), should be made to pay for the parental leave of its own workers. It may be the father or mother who takes time off after the birth of a child, the time period may be more than 12 weeks, and the employer should bear the cost of this.
Over the years of federal Labor government, corporate tax has already dropped substantially. To provide publicly funded maternity leave to workers from the private sector as a trade-off for wage rises lets business off the hook — both in terms of paying for the entitlements of its own workers and in terms of real wage rises.
By Kath Gelber